Publication:

Prevalence of burnout among the health team workers at paediatric intensive care unit

Background Paediatricians work in the ICU have to deal with babies who have serious or chronic conditions associated with multiple problems and they have to interact with their stressed and often fatigued parents. This makes them more exposed to developed burnout. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of burnout among the paediatric health team at King Abdulaziz University Hospital and to determine the stress predictors among them.

Methods This cross-sectional study utilized the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) that was distributed to the all the target group who filled it anonymously. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) Version 16.

Results About 58 % of the participants had moderate grade burn out and 61 % of them had high grade of exhaustion. "Being single" and "being married with children" were significant predictors of burnout among the participants. The top five stressors for the participants were the poor work life balance, patient education, salary, volume of work and decision making in ICU. There was significant positive correlation between the degree of burnout and the lack of institutional resources (p=0.001), poor work life balance (p<0.001), volume of work (0.012), complexity of clinical work (p=0.009) and on call requirement (p=0.004).

Conclusions Large percent of pediatric ICU health team experienced high grade of emotional exhaustion compared to their national or international peers. There should be an interventional preventive plans to deal with such phenomenon.